“We’ve been thinking seriously about expanding our Dallas office,” Sidley chairman Carter Phillips told the Wall Street Journal Law Blog yesterday. “But if this group had shown up at any of our offices we would have been equally enthusiastic.”

Michael Saslow, the ninth Weil partner, is heading over to the Dallas office of Vinson & Elkins.

In June, the 1,200-lawyer New York-based Weil announced it would cut 60 associate lawyers (about 7 percent of all associates) and 110 staff employees. In addition, about 10 percent of the firm’s 300 partners saw serious reductions in their compensation, with some partners losing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Phillips told the Law Blog that none of the partners that are leaving for Sidley had been targeted as part of those cuts. “I do think it probably raised some concerns on their part about Weil’s commitment to practices outside of New York,” he added.